


fish cheek

by unhedged



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 22:20:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10671921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhedged/pseuds/unhedged
Summary: a message written on a piece of paper left in a certain place.





	fish cheek

**Author's Note:**

  * For [qmisato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qmisato/gifts).



>   
> How many letters have I written like this  
> I got used to writing letters to nobody.
> 
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>   
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
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> 

_June 16, 2007._  


  
See, this is where you have left me. I am writing this to separate everything for both our sakes.

The beer I paid for cost ¥2,400. You don't believe me when I say this, that the night we met you had eight glasses, and that was why you fell asleep in a heap on the floor, moments after you asked me to come in. Seeing you there, arm wedged under your limp body, rattled breathing through the back of your throat, I felt sorry for myself. I felt a little sorry for you too. I rolled out the futon for you, and carried you to it, and tucked you in, and I opened the windows, and turned on the fan, so I could smoke without soiling your tatami. The air was too warm. I could already see, the wreckage we would leave. It was nearing dawn when you woke up. I made you breakfast, and gave you the fish cheek, and made you laugh, but I found the rice and fish in your kitchen, so let's not put a price on that, shall we?

You tell our friends a different story, an everyman college romance with the edges filed to smoothness. I wonder now if you were ashamed of my lack of wanting for you. It's insanity, but you know I don't mind, I laugh it off, I would let you have this lie you told so often you began to believe it. I thought that was kindness. Well, as I said, I was young. So here, the truth. I have kept the bill right here in my back pocket. The ink has faded, it was never meant to last two years, but when you put it against the sun, you can almost make it out: Six glasses times ¥400 and two free ones (they had a special then) totaling ¥2,400. 

Maybe that proves nothing. All things considered, it was a good buy, well worth the price of entry. 

Then we had sex, say, twice a day on average, so we can call that even. One I gave to you, and the other you returned. You can trust me on the numbers. I kept count by drawing notches against your balcony door, see for yourself, I am a vile, tasteless lecher with a bad sense of humor. One-thousand five-hundred sixty-nine. So you see it comes down to mere pennies, even if we come to an odd number. 

There was one you gave to me and I never returned. I'm sorry, I don't remember when or what month it was, but afterwards, we were both too awake, my limbs still weak and effulgent from inhaling you. The fan did nothing for the humidity, and sweat turned your arms slippery against my neck when I pulled you onto my lap, and you started talking, breath in my ear, about everything you wanted to be and to do, you couldn't stop once you started, and you went on and on, and talked faster and faster, and I liked it. I felt all that life in you was rushing into me, when I had so little life in me, your light, your fire, your violent waves crashing against my shores, coming into me through that hot breath in my ear, and I wanted you to go on forever and I could go on living, like so, I would be able to go on, but without you I am not sure.

Wait, don't leave yet. I haven't finished. I will get back to what I was saying, about working it out for us.

The rent on your apartment was ¥48,000 a month, but unlike you, I had no mountain of inheritance to draw upon (what did you ever see in me?), so we split that unevenly: you paid ¥38,000 for my ¥10,000 and that adds up to a terrifying difference of ¥730,000 for our twenty-six months and four days of playing house. So you see, you made a bad purchase. You gave too much for a wretched shadow of a man who had no way of repaying you, the worst kind of lover who was afraid of what awes him and breathes sorrow into your veins to make you palatable, and it was always bound to end badly. 

So I want to offer you more than a list of ambiguous debts and favors owed, something more than my desolation. But I still have to tell you of the times when I am sleeping and not even dreaming about you, but you are there next to me, reading or watching TV or sleeping too. Your tossing and turning wake me up enough times in the night to remind me you are there, and I wake to see you were lying on your side, an arm slung over me, but later you were on your back, lips buried in the blanket, I watched your closed eyes and I wanted to kiss your eyelids, but I didn't want to wake you. I know, sleep was hard to come by, for you. So I kept still and watched and I hold on to it, these times when I am watching over you and you are near me and not apart from me the way you will be when you wake. I want to stay up all night to go on feeling that, but I never could, I fall asleep again.

What I am saying is, three days ago, before you left to stay with Rit-chan, you said I should take whatever I want and leave the rest for you and you gave me no room to argue. I sat here like a dog, waiting for you to come back, talking to the you in my mind like I have never talked to you, telling that other you what I could never say, and the moment you opened the door, I knew. I pushed you flush against the wall and every part of your body was against mine and kissed your mouth, tasted your tongue sticky, sour and sweet, and you pushed me away and hit me so hard I was seeing stars. Well, I had to be sure. You told me yourself, to take whatever I want. 

We sat on opposite walls, when a gaggle of children passed under the windows shouting, and then you started to cry and I began to laugh, it seems hysterical now. How mundane it was that you called me bastard, jerk, asshole, as if I had only lost the remote or finished the last one of your beer, how I expected you to know the words that could hurt me, but you didn't. Are you there? Can you hear me? Listen, there is a certain clinical satisfaction in seeing just how bad things can get. This is a madness we will never live past, so let me write you the worst story, where we are both miserable all the time and we hated each other even when I was moving inside you. Then let me do it right for once, write you a story where everyone is forgiven even if we don't deserve it.

Please, when I offer you my lips, take them. Take my hands, my throat, my eyes when I offer. Chew. Swallow me whole. Vomit. Swallow more. Finish me. You were never one to do anything halfway, why change now? _Take._ See, I offered you an old shirt because I could find no tissue, and I thought you might want to wipe your face, how uneasy it makes me to see you cry, but you might not want me to be the one to dry your eyes anymore. But then you took it and left. I never meant for that to be my last gift to you, but ah, life works in strange ways. I never meant for a lot of things to happen, and you never meant a lot of what you said. Katsuragi, I started writing to tell you that you have forgotten something, that you should come by and pick it up or it might be gone tomorrow, but you have everything you need, laid out before your feet, all yours for the taking. So take. 

I will never send this letter, because my words are stillborn. We were a fluke, I think you know. I wanted to tell you where I am coming from, so you can put me together, separate everything, work us out, tell me what it all means. But it is no use. Beneath each mask of mine lies another mask, I am a ghost of a boy, pure deception, outside and in, surface and inner core. 

You will never understand.

So now it is my turn to ask. How can you hand me ¥730,000 and seven-hundred eighty-four days of your youth, and how can you walk away with just an old yellow shirt? Tell me you have left something behind, at least.  
  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  
  



End file.
